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Spore: new game allows players to ‘evolve’ creatures;
should creationists be concerned?

Published: 21 October 2008 (GMT+10)

Photo www.sxc.hu

Spore, a new game created by Sims designer Will Wright, allows
players to create their own microbial creatures, and then guide them through various
levels of development and civilization. This cartoonish game has attracted the attention
of the ardently pro-evolution
Scientific American and National Geographic Channel
(the latter aired a documentary about the game on 9 September), who discuss how
this game interacts with creation/evolution issues. Spore begins with a
meteorite crashing into a planet, filling its oceans with microbial life. Naturally,
this overlooks the problems with chemical evolution of the
first life, as well as recent experimental evidence that
any germs would be fried upon entry into the earth’s atmosphere.
Players modify a microscopic creature in the creature creator and guide it through
several life stages. Gradually the creature grows and moves from sea to land and
gains new structures to help it better survive and face new challenges. These structures
are unlocked as the creature preys on other creatures. Eventually the creatures
will take over their world and move to conquer other worlds which are populated
by other player-created creatures.

A ‘philosophy toy’

Many might comment, ‘But it’s just a game, right? No one takes the game
seriously as an explanation how life develops in the real world, surely!’
In a saner world, that would be the case; however, many regular gamers see this
game as a real explanation and even proof of evolution. More importantly, Wright
himself sees Spore as more than ‘just a game’: in a
video presenting the game, he said ‘The games that I do I really think
of more as modern story-toys, and I really kind of want them to be presented in
a way to where kids can explore and discover their own principles.’ He cites
the SETI program and ‘astrobiology’
as one of his inspirations, and says that it’s meant to be a ‘philosophy
toy’ to inspire philosophical questions. He acknowledges
that aspects of the game are ‘very Darwinian.’

One also senses a bit of radical environmentalist influence; if the player fills
the atmosphere with more carbon dioxide, the ocean levels rise, mimicking a scenario
that many environmentalists think is possible with greenhouse gasses on earth. Processes
that would take many years, if it happened at all, could be replicated in minutes.
‘It’s like we’re using the game to re-map our intuition’.
(See CMI’s views on global warming.)

The video ends with this revealing statement:

‘The reason I make toys like this is because I think if there’s one
difference I could possibly make in the world, that I would choose to make, it’s
that I would like to somehow give people just a little bit better calibration on
long-term thinking, because I think most of the problems that our world is faced
[with] right now, is the result of short-term thinking and the fact that it’s
so hard for us to think fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years out. And I think by
giving kids toys like this and letting them replay dynamics, you know, very long-term
dynamics over the short term and getting some sense of what we’re doing now
and what it’s going to be like in a hundred years, I think is probably the
most effective thing I can be doing, probably, to help the world. That’s why
I think toys can change the world.’

Does Spore replicate evolution?

No computer simulation depicts evolutionary processes realistically because there
are constraints on the processes that do not exist in real life. For instance, many
simulations make it impossible for the population to go extinct; there are protections
in place to make sure that at least some survive. And they certainly don’t
have to cope with the real chemical processes that real living organisms have mechanisms
to cope with.

While the game may be ‘very Darwinian’ in the sense that the player’s
creature competes against other artificial life forms to grow and survive, there
is a lot of ‘intelligent design’ involved in making the creature. The
player actively creates the creatures; if the player wants the creature to evolve
arms or a tail, for instance, the player adds them on; the creature will not randomly
mutate then be fine-tuned by natural selection. Rather, complex structures arise
then turn out to be useful. The creatures will not even survive on their own; they
require guidance from the player.

No computer simulation depicts evolutionary processes realistically because there
are constraints on the processes that do not exist in real life. For instance, many
simulations make it impossible for the population to go extinct; there are protections
in place to make sure that at least some survive. And they certainly don’t
have to cope with the real chemical processes that real living organisms have mechanisms
to cope with. In Spore, if the player decides to fight an opponent twice
the size of his creature and the creature is killed, it does not go extinct, but
comes back at the same stage to try again to advance to the next stage. In essence,
there is no way to lose!

One of the more curious components of the game from an evolutionary standpoint is
how quickly the creature advances. In one stage, the creature is an amoeba floating
in a drop of water, and in the next, a fully developed multi-celled creature. But
where does the information come from for these changes, e.g. the
serial cell differentiation system required for multicellular life?

[One evolutionist] said that if it persuaded students to accept evolution, that
would be great, even if it does not communicate the idea accurately. … It
is tempting to think of it as ‘simply a game’, but evolutionists are
not above using what they know to be faulty evidence to try to persuade students
that evolution is true.

Even evolutionists say that Spore does not depict evolution accurately;
the New York Times article noted that the way mutations spread through
populations is not accurately depicted, and they criticize the ‘one dimensional
march of progress from single-cell life to intelligence’. However, Dr Thomas
Near said that if the game persuades students to accept evolution, that would be
great, even if it does not communicate the idea accurately. And this is the danger
of Spore. It is tempting to think of it as ‘simply a game’,
but evolutionists are not above using what they know to be
faulty evidence to try to persuade students that evolution is true.

What can we learn from Spore?

Wright’s comments above should make it clear that Spore is not intended
to be a ‘neutral’ game; it was created with an evolutionary philosophy
behind it, with the goal that children playing the game would discover and accept
that philosophy for themselves. As Christians, we should be aware of the influence
that even innocent-looking entertainment can have on children. Though Spore
is tagged as an ‘educational game’, Christian parents should be aware
that what the game aims to teach is an anti-Christian view of the world.

Evolutionists are out to persuade children of the truth of their claims through
the school system, movies, and even computer games. Wright realizes that the way
to change the culture is to influence the younger generation, who are younger and
still figuring out the way they think about the world. Christian parents must be
increasingly vigilant to make sure that the messages that their children absorb
are consistent with a biblical worldview.

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